Amateur astronomers from Shoalhaven Australia

Annular Eclipse 10th May 2013

On the morning of Friday 10 May an annual or partial eclipse will pass across northern Australia.

In Sydney, the eclipse begins at 7.50 am reachng 39% coverage of the suns face at 8.57am and ending at 10.14am. The Sun will be 24 degrees above the eastern horizon which should provide reasonable viewing for most observers. The further towards teh tropic of Capricorn you are, the greater the eclipse will cover the sun. Being an annular eclipse, the sun will not be totally blacked out and is therefore dangerous to observe without filtered protection throughout the entire event.

The eclipse can be safely viewed using a telescope equipped with a specialised solar filter or simply projecting the image through a small telescope. Cardboard framed ‘eclipse glasses’ meeting international standards are also safe to use if their instructions are followed. Suitable ‘eclipse glasses’ are available locally from reputable astronomy shops, public Observatories and Planetaria.

More information about the eclipse and safe ways to view it can be found in a Factsheet produced by the Astronomical Society of Australia (ASA). The sheet has been posted on the ASA’s Australian Astronomy web site (http://www.astronomy.org.au). The Factsheet link is:

http://astronomy.org.au/education/factsheets/. You may wish to use this sheet to inform friends, students or the public about this event. The sheet may be freely copied for wide distribution provided the Australian Astronomy and ASA logos are retained.